Posts in the “technology” category

Mac freeware photo editing software FAQ: What free Mac photo editing software (Mac photo editing freeware) is available these days?

If you're looking for "freeware photo editing software", two great free Mac photo editing applications are Gimp and Picasa. I'll take a look at these two free Mac photo editing software applications in this short review, but as an added bonus, even though I say "Mac", both of these applications are available for Windows computers, and possibly Linux as well.

It drives me crazy when I have to work at client sites and they have a web proxy like Websense set up that keeps me from doing my job. Don't get me wrong -- a tool like Websense is probably necessary for a lot of reasons, especially in larger organizations -- but on the flip side, a lot of technical blogs that I use as resources end up being blocked by Websense, and that "Blocked by Websense" message drives me nuts.

Web browser privacy FAQ: Can you share some internet/web browser privacy tips? (i.e., What can I do to improve my web browser privacy and security?)

With the latest Adobe Flash security snafu (see my uninstall Mac Flash article), I'm again reminded of the topic of internet web browser privacy and security. I've written about browser privacy before, but this time I thought I'd take a different tact and share the things I know and do to help have a modicum of web browser privacy.

GoDaddy web hosting versus A2 Hosting: While looking around for a private Git hosting service, I ran across a company named A2 Hosting, and I have to say, their hosting services have opened my eyes. For the last few years I've been using GoDaddy web hosting services for most of my web hosting needs, but if A2 Hosting is anywhere near as good as their documentation and service plans, a year from now they'll probably have all my web hosting business.

A GoDaddy web hosting review: I've been a GoDaddy web hosting customer for more than three years now, but as I've been looking around for a private Git hosting service, my eyes were opened to another web hosting company named A2 Hosting. Based on my initial research, I just wrote an A2 Hosting v GoDaddy web hosting comparison/review.

While A2 Hosting looks like they might be more of a "developer friendly" web hosting service, I thought I'd take a few moments to offer my own review of the GoDaddy web hosting service, without taking A2 into consideration.

I've been trying to do a lot of things lately to make my "social networking" life easier, but technology keeps beating me down. Yesterday I created some Safari web clips so I could see Twitter, Facebook, and several other web pages on my Mac dashboard (dashboard widgets), but the Twitter and Facebook web clips kept crashing, so after several tries, I gave up.

A2 Hosting review 2010: After using GoDaddy web hosting services for the last four years, I just started using the A2 Hosting web hosting services yesterday. Here are my impressions so far.

A2 Hosting review - The initial experience

Buying the new domain name and paying for one year's hosting with A2 Hosting went normally. The nice A2 Hosting coupon (30% off with the phrase "JINGLE") was very nice, making the total price for the domain name and one year's hosting less than $70.

A2 Hosting Review 2010, Day 4: After four years of using GoDaddy web hosting services, four days ago (December, 2010) I started an experiment to use the A2 Hosting web hosting services. A2's specs -- including the ability to access my web server and also use an A2 Hosting server as a private Git server -- looked impressive, so I set up a new domain and website with them.

RockMelt browser review - I'll probably be off this "social web browser" kick soon, but at the moment, it's a very intriguing playing field. As I wrote in my earlier Mac social web browsers review, even in a beta status, I think the new RockMelt browser is the current king of social web browsers.

RockMelt browser review - The short story

If you're interested in going down the social web browser road, here's what's good about RockMelt:

A Chrome OS notebook test? - As a friend wrote to me the other day, "Want to try a Google Chrome OS notebook? Take you current notebook/laptop/netbook, fire up the Chrome browser, put it into full screen mode, and see how long you can work that way."

Twitter icons meaning: I may be the only one on the planet who doesn't understand the meaning of the current Twitter icons, but really, I don't understand most of them. A Twitter reply icon is an empty ballon? The media icon I kinda get, but the Twitter geo pin icon I don't get. (Maybe I don't work with geo tags and geographic locations much, but I can think of a few million people who also don't.)

Unhide Facebook friends FAQ: How do I unhide Facebook friends?

In a hurry recently -- and not wanting to see the output of yet another Facebook game (why can't I hide all Facebook games?) -- I accidentally hid one of my Facebook friends. After poking around for quite a while I finally figured out how to unhide them. Here's how to do it.

How to unhide a Facebook friend

To unhide a Facebook friend, follow these steps:

Dropbox syncing FAQ: How do I know when Dropbox is syncing my files?

On a Mac, you can tell when Dropbox is syncing your files by looking at the Dropbox icon in your Mac menu bar. When Dropbox is not syncing your files the icon will have a little check mark on it, like this blown-up image:

Here's my GoDaddy 4GH hosting review: It sucks. A friend on Twitter warned me about it, but sadly, I didn't listen.

As a backup to that "review", here's the downtime on just one of my websites for the last several days:

Flash and web privacy FAQ: What are "Flash cookies", or "Flash super cookies"?

A few weeks ago I wrote an article on Web browser privacy, security, and Flash cookies, and as I was just correcting a few mistakes in it, I noticed this line:

When I first installed Better Privacy, I found a whopping 226 Flash cookies (LSO files) on my filesystem.

Summary: A comparison of Wordpress and Drupal, circa 2009. (2011 Update: Drupal 7 is much easier to use than Drupal 6, which was described in this article.)

Drupal login FAQ: Help, I just changed my Drupal theme, and I can't log in to my Drupal website(!).

Solution

You can do some really amazing things with Drupal, with one amazing thing being the ability to log yourself out of the system, and make you think you have no way of logging yourself back in.

Problem: You want to create an iTunes playlist of all your favorite songs. You've rated all your songs using the Rating field in your main iTunes Library, but you don't know how to turn all these song ratings into a great playlist.

Several friends have asked me how to upload photos/pictures in Facebook, so I keep the following handy email message around. In case anyone else needs to know how to upload pictures in Facebook, here are my instructions:

Facebook photos - how to upload photos/pictures (initially)

In the first Facebook photo upload scenario, it's important to know that you store your photos in a photo album. So the first time you upload pictures to Facebook, you'll need to create a Facebook Photo Album, as described in these steps:

I'm intrigued by the Apple A4 processor that powers the iPad. I've been looking around for decent articles on the A4 chip design, and so far the best article I can find is this PC World article.